Category: Dog Friendly

2025 James Beard Foundation "Best Chef - Southwest" SemifinalistClosed in 2025Dog FriendlyFine DiningGone But Not ForgottenItalianNew MexicoSanta Fe

Sassella – Santa Fe, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:01 AM

In Cold Tuscan Stone, the first in a series of spellbinding mysteries set in Italy, author David P. Wagner did such a magnificent job in developing relatable characters and creating a sense of place that I felt myself transported to the world of Rick Montoya, the affable protagonist in David’s series.  Through David’s vivid imagery, I could almost taste, smell and experience la dolce vita of the Italian countryside.  I laughed with delightful voyeurism at the bumpkinly naivete of Herb and Shirley, an American couple who came to Italy to find an Italian chef for a restaurant they planned to open in Davenport, Iowa. Not surprisingly their benchmark for Italian cooking was the Olive Garden.   They were puzzled when the menus at the Italian restaurants they visited in the ancient Tuscan hill town of Volterra didn’t offer spaghetti and meatballs or pasta Alfredo.  It baffled them that they had to ask for olive oil to dip their bread into. “It’s almost like they don’t know what Italian food is,” they decried. Can it really be true that the Italian food we know and love across the fruited plain isn’t Italian at all?  That’s what Food Network star Alton Brown…

Brewery-PubColoradoDog FriendlyIrishRating: N/R (Not Rated)United States

Shamrock Brewing Co. – Pueblo, Colorado

Gil Garduno1:46 PM

When my friend David Wagner, author of the spell-binding Rick Montoya Italian mysteries, invited us to dinner at the Shamrock Brewing Co. in his hometown of Pueblo, Colorado, I quickly leapt to the conclusion that Shamrock just might be the inspiration for O’Shea’s Irish Pub, the favorite gathering spot for Rick Montoya and other English-speaking expats living in Rome.  I pictured “a decor that could best be described as mid-century modern, that century being the seventeenth” with wood being the dominant feature.  My picture included a “professional tavern owner” with an appropriated name, maybe something like Guido Shamrock, would preside over the place. Shamrock wasn’t much like O’Shea’s.  Thankfully, it wasn’t much like contemporary Irish pubs across the fruited plain either.  You know the type:  the de rigueur Irish name (O’Casey, O’Brien, O’MyGod), tacky green paint with decorative leprechauns leaping around, super-cooled Guinness and lots of that good old-fashioned Irish craic (an old Gaelic term referring to the lively essence of the pub experience).  It’s gotten so bad Irish pubs have become a parody of stereotypes, prompting  some Europeans to denounce them as “the McDonald’s of the pub trade.”     In terms of look, feel and attitude, Shamrock may not…

AlbuquerqueColombianDog FriendlyNew MexicoRating: Very Good

Ajiaco Colombian Bistro – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno2:37 PM

If your perception of Colombia is of a nation beleaguered with drugs, terrorism and violence, you may just have to recalibrate your thinking. In 2014, for the second consecutive year, a WIN-Gallup poll conducted in 65 countries revealed that Colombia earned the distinction of being the world’s happiest country. Known as the “Barometer of Happiness and Hope,” the survey reported that of 1,012 Colombian respondents, 86 percent consider themselves “happy” while only 2 percent report themselves as “unhappy.” The United States, by the way, ranked as only the 31st happiest nation surveyed. So what could possibly account for Colombia’s surprisingly high happiness quotient? In discussing the survey results with my friend John (who’s married to a beautiful Colombian woman), I joked that if all Colombian women looked like Sofia Vergara and Shakira, it’s no wonder there’s so much happiness. His response was that not only are all Colombian women beautiful, they can all cook, too. What they’re cooking most he told me is ajiaco, a traditional Colombian chicken and potato soup. It’s not surprising, therefore, that Albuquerque’s sole Colombian restaurant is named Ajiaco for the feel-good comfort food favorite of a nation increasingly celebrated for its gastronomic splendor. Launched in…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBar & GrillBrewery-PubClosed in 2020Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenNew Mexico

1933 Brewing Co. – Rio Rancho, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno8:43 PM

“Why don’t they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as well as prohibition did, in five years Americans would be the smartest race of people on Earth.” ~Will Rogers “I’ll drink to that.”  Such was the rampant sentiment with which Americans welcomed the repeal of the notorious 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which had prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors…”  For more than a decade Prohibition had not only wrought dramatic increases in alcoholism and crime, it had created a lucrative black market for liquor.  Gangsters such as Al Capone and thousands of bootleggers across the fruited plain basically fulfilled American demand for intoxicating liquor with a supply of unregulated, often lethal alcohol.  Franklin Roosevelt, made the repeal of Prohibition integral to his campaign platform, calling Prohibition a “complete and tragic failure.” Roosevelt made good on his campaign promises, culminating in the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which repealed Prohibition in 1933. In a proclamation declaring the repeal, Roosevelt urged Americans to “drink responsibly” and “… not bring upon themselves the curse of excessive use of intoxicating liquors, to the detriment of health, morals and social integrity.” In the…

AlbuquerqueAmericanBreakfastClosed in 2022Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenNew MexicanNew MexicoSandwich

2G’s Bistro – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno12:31 AM

In May, 2018, Yelp published its listing of the 50 best restaurants in Albuquerque. Only three of them came from the not-yet-done-revitalizing East Downtown (EDo) district. The two that won’t surprise anyone are The Grove Cafe & Market at number eight and Standard Diner at number forty-seven. Sandwiched between them is a relative newcomer named 2G’s Bistro which ranked twenty-first. Geographically, 2G’s Bistro is also sandwiched somewhere between The Grove and the Standard Diner on Central Avenue. My very preliminary assessment (one visit) is that it may be better than its EDo neighbors on Yelp’s list (gasp, the sacrilege). Even though 2G’s only had 43 Yelp reviews as of my first visit, they averaged five stars.  Fourteen months later (August, 2019), 2G’s had 115 Yelp reviews while holding on to its lofty five star rating.  It was also named by Yelp as Albuquerque’s top kid friendly restaurant. Though respondent demographics weren’t reported, you’ve got to know it’s not just kids who esteem it so highly.  Parents appreciate that even though 2G’s doesn’t have a kids menu, it will custom make items kids love such as small sandwiches, grilled cheese and pancakes.  It’s likely if Yelp ever compiled a list of…

AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyLatin AmericanNew MexicoRating: N/R (Not Rated)

La Fonda Del Bosque – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno6:55 PM

In the millennium year, after years of planning and lobbying, the dream was finally realized of a haven dedicated to the preservation, promotion, and advancement of Hispanic culture, arts, and humanities. In 2000, the National Hispanic Cultural Center (NHCC), launched along the Camino Real in the Albuquerque’s historic Barelas neighborhood. The Center is an architectural anomaly in a largely adobe-hued area.  Its unique structures include a renovated hacienda-style school, a stylized Mayan pyramid with interior elements modeled on Romanesque architecture and a torreon (tower) housing a 4,000 square foot concave fresco depicting over 3,000 years of Hispanic history. Ironically the complex chartered to preserve, protect and promote Hispanic culture had to displace several families, thereby disenfranchising some of the very families who embody Albuquerque’s Hispanic culture. One resident–the late Adela Martinez–stared down bureaucrats and made them blink, refusing to move. The forty-million dollar Cultural Center had to be redesigned to accommodate her family in the home she moved into in the 1920s. Today, her family’s two small houses stand out, not like a sore thumb, but as a testament to the courage of one 80-year old Hispanic woman whose treasured memories were worth much more than the monetary treasures government…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2024Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenNew MexicanNew Mexico

Monica’s El Portal – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno2:33 PM

“It feels so true when I’m with you I’m free A place I go that feels like home to me It feels so true It’s time well spent when I’m with you.” ~Feels Like Home (New Mexico True) For years, as we luxuriated over steamy mugs of freshly ground coffee on lazy Sunday mornings before church, my Kim and I tuned in eagerly to New Mexico True Television, an invigorating half-hour of adventure and travel that fed the soul and captured the imagination. Hearts swelled with pride, we lived vicariously through host Michael Newman as he treked throughout our breathtaking home state. We didn’t even change the channel during commercials. Why would we? The commercials depicted even more of the Land of Enchantment. Besides providing even more intriguing staycation ideas, some of the commercials featured a catchy little ditty called “Feels Like Home,” an upbeat song originally performed by an Albuquerque band called Richmond. It’s a feel good, toe-tapping, sing-along-inspiring tune that pays tribute to New Mexico. If you’re going to have an earworm stuck in your head, it may as well be one that recounts the extraordinary beauty of the Land of Enchantment.  Sadly, the New Mexico Tourism Department…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2021Dog FriendlyFrenchGone But Not ForgottenRating: Excellent

P’Tit Louis Bistro – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno1:07 PM

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” –Ernest Hemingway I’ve often wondered if Ernest Hemingway would have felt at home in Taos during the “roaring twenties,” a period of dynamic artistic, societal and lifestyle upheaval. Instead of communing with the Taos Society of Artists and other inspired Bohemian minds, Hemingway spent much of the decade in Paris, a city whose own liberal attitudes attracted poets, painters and writers from throughout the world. Paris was a vibrant city which drew many expats from the so-called “lost generation” of cynical young people disillusioned with the materialism and individualism prevalent in society at the time. Paris was not only a relatively inexpensive city in which to live, unlike America it did not have a prohibition against alcohol. The American expatriates–F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein among them–would gather at cafes to discuss their work and drink until their money ran out. Much of Hemingway’s most productive writing, in fact, took place in cafes which he visited with his characteristic blue notebooks, pencils and a pocket knife…

AlbuquerqueDog FriendlyFood TruckNew MexicoPizzaRating: Very Good

Punchy’s Wood-Fired Pizza – Albuquerque, New Mexico

Gil Garduno2:16 PM

In the parlance of the pugilist, “punchy” is synonymous with punch-drunk, the result of having been battered violently by an opponent. You know, like Rocky Balboa after a few rounds with Apollo Creed. Don’t ever try to correct the family of Giordano Bruno (1905-1992) if they insist on a different definition. They’ll tell you Grandpa Giordano, the family patriarch, earned the nickname Punchy because of his punching prowess as a Golden Gloves boxing phenom. He could really pack a punch they say, winning 80 bouts and going undefeated during his career. More often than not, it was his hapless opponents who were left loopy after a fusillade of lefts, rights and uppercuts.  Punchy’s talents weren’t limited to the squared circle. He could really cook some knockout Italian dishes, too. When he emigrated to Chicago from Milan, Italy in the 1920s he brought with him family recipes from Tuscany and Naples, the birthplaces of his parents—and the latter, also the birthplace of modern day pizza as we know it. Punchy worked as a chef in Chicago then New York (and if you can make it there…) before moving to New Mexico in 1943. During Sunday family get-togethers, Punchy taught his grandchildren…

AlbuquerqueClosed in 2019Dog FriendlyGone But Not ForgottenMexicanNew MexicanNew MexicoRating: Outstanding

Sophia’s – Albuquerque, New Mexico (CLOSED)

Gil Garduno10:01 AM

Exterior signage for Dennis Apodaca’s new restaurant venture sports the name of the previous tenant, a short-lived eatery named MIXX. In a February blurb announcing Dennis’s return, the Albuquerque Journal called his new venture “REMIXX.” A handwritten note scrawled on the front door, however, informs you that you’ve arrived at “Sophia’s – that you knew & loved on 4th St. NW.” Not taking any chances, Yelp lists entries for both “REMIXX by Sophia’s Place” and “Sophia’s.” So which is it? Ask Dennis and he’ll tell you that despite what the sign says, his restaurant is a relaunch of Sophia’s, the celebrated restaurant that made him one of Albuquerque’s most talked-about and respected chefs. “I’d rather spend money on serving great food than replacing a sign” he laughs. Dennis points out that the exterior signage for Trois Mec, one of the most revered fine-dining restaurants in Los Angeles, still bears the name of its predecessor, Raffalo’s Pizza. That’s entirely by design, the point being that despite a constantly changing five-course tasting menu approaching a C-note price point, the restaurant is unpretentious, its focus being on the food not peripherals such as signage. The term “unpretentious” probably fits Dennis more than it…

AmericanBrunchCorralesDog FriendlyNew MexicoRating: Excellent

Indigo Crow Cafe – Corrales, New Mexico

Gil Garduno11:55 PM

Now I lay myself down to sleep I pray oh lord my soul to keep Cause if I should die before I wake I hope up in Heaven they’ve got lobster and steak It’s a sin if Heaven ain’t got an Indigo Crow Best food down here up there they’ve gotta know. A Sin if Heaven ain’t got an Indigo Crow But if they don’t then why the hell should I go. Now I’ve tried every joint around here I’ve had green chile stew, I’ve had had my root beer But when I want to treat my taste buds right I know this place is drop-dead tight It’s a sin if Heaven ain’t got an Indigo Crow Best food down here up there they gotta know. – Oscar Butler What would possess troubadour Oscar Butler to rhapsodize in his inimitable melodious timbre about a charming rural retreat in Corrales, New Mexico which serves some of the very best food in the metropolitan Duke City area?  A native New Yorker now living in Albuquerque, Butler sums it up in four words, “Great food, great atmosphere!” There’s a lot to love about the Indigo Crow and it starts with ambiance (atmosphere, if…